This article first appeared on The Future Conservative, a political blog run by Jack Fencl ’22 and Dennis Hull ’22. Check out https://www.futureconservative.com for more!

By Jack Fencl ‘22

Though it’s no longer dominating the news as it was over the summer, the problem of cancel culture is as important as it has ever been. While cancel culture is most frequently associated with the woke left, it is all too common on the right. Just as conservatives must vehemently oppose the woke revolution on the left, so too must we reject the same corrosive mindset from taking over the American right.

To be clear: cancel culture is a much bigger problem on the left today than on the right. However, there are troubling signs that conservatives, too, are beginning to embrace a similar mindset.

Many conservatives are understandably sick and tired of the left’s double standards, faux outrage, and general hypocrisy. Many people—myself included—have started to wonder, “why should we play nice if they won’t?” While it is tempting to sink to the lowest common denominator, we must resist this impulse.

A recent situation at Washington and Lee University aptly illustrates why cancel culture is always wrong, regardless of which side is doing the cancelling. On September 3rd, Breitbart published an article with the title: “Washington and Lee University Offers Course on ‘How to Overthrow the State’. The article takes a position of outrage, implying that a course with that title is inherently problematic or proof that higher education has become irreconcilably corrupt. In fact, this assertion is all the article really seems to care about, as it pays little attention to the purpose and true intent of the class in question.

Indeed, if Breitbart actually bothered to look beyond the class’s provocative title, it is likely the whole controversy would have been avoided. Students are not being taught “how to lead a revolution,” as the article suggests; rather, the class is merely a freshman writing seminar, designed to help first-year students get comfortable with writing papers in college. As part of their studies, students read prominent examples of writing that inspired political revolutions throughout history, including the Declaration of Independence. Alas, unlike the students in the class, Breitbart did not do their homework and a very stupid controversy was born.

After the article was published, many right wing political figures took to their medium of choice to express concern. For example, Newt Gingrich said on Twitter, “Washington and Lee University’s course on “how to overthrow the state” is one further sign of the insanity taking over higher education. The alumni should rise up and show how to overthrow a crazy college administration.”

This tweet was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the response, but it is a prime example of cancel culture taking root on the right. Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House and holder of a PhD, is a well-established and respected conservative thinker. He cannot be dismissed as an unserious person, proving that right-wing cancel culture is taking hold among conservatism’s most prominent figures and not just a rabid fringe. 

By weighing in on the issue, Gingrich displayed a flippant disregard for the truth. It seems highly unlikely that someone of his prestige and intellect would be upset if he knew the course was a freshman writing seminar. He is correct to be worried about the left-wing craziness that dominates higher education today, but his concern appears to have made him lose any interest in understanding the facts and context of the class. He simply saw something he didn't like and went after it on social media. The underlying dynamics at play here are no different than when the Twitter mob gets riled up any time there is a police shooting. They don’t wait to get all the facts or seek to understand what actually happened; they simply go insane, as evidenced by the lunacy of the reaction to the recent incident in Lancaster, PA, where a man charged a police officer with a knife and was subsequently shot. This unthinking, visceral reaction is at the heart of cancel culture, and it is worrisome to see the right falling into the same rabbit hole, even if the left continues to be far, far worse.

The reaction from some on the right became so extreme that W&L President Will Dudley felt the need to send a community-wide email addressing the situation. In the September 7th communication, Dudley lamented that a freshman writing seminar “was distorted, sensationalized, and turned into political fodder on blogs, television, and social media.” He also informed the community that some faculty members have had threats of violence made against them as a result, which should serve as a reminder that we are living through an incredibly combustible political moment.

Then on September 8th, The General’s Redoubt—an alumni group dedicated to preserving W&L institutional history—sent a letter to the W&L community in response to President Dudley’s message. The Redoubt’s response was lengthy, but their basic critique was that, “This intense scrutiny was entirely foreseeable, the administration failed to recognize it as a possibility, and the administration is now circling the wagons and brushing it off as a non-issue by all but ignoring the title of the course and focusing almost exclusively on its content.”

Many people I talked to, including fellow conservatives on campus, found the Redoubt’s position reasonable. Indeed, the Redoubt was probably correct to point out that the University would have responded differently had the controversy been about a hypothetical course titled, “How to Make America Great Again: Restoring Prosperity by Looking to the Past.” It is undeniable that we live in a world full of hypocrisy and double standards, but as frustrating as this fact is, we cannot allow it to become justification for embracing the pathetic cancel culture mindset.

The controversy over the provocatively titled class was an example of right-wing cancel culture for several reasons. First, in their response, The General’s Redoubt said, “the conversation surrounding this particular course goes beyond academic freedom.” It doesn’t.

Academic freedom and freedom of speech aren’t necessary or even useful for uncontroversial ideas. We embrace these principles to defend freedom of thought precisely because they protect those who hold beliefs and opinions that fall outside of the cultural and political mainstream. These principles enable brave, fresh thinkers to stand strong in the face of unrelenting social pressure. By attacking the University for offering a class with an edgy title, the Redoubt is rejecting academic freedom where it matters the most. Whether they admit that is what they are doing or not is irrelevant.

But issues of academic freedom aside, the logic underpinning the Redoubt’s entire argument reeks of the same pathetic fragility that makes so much of the contemporary left unbearable. Their argument boils down to “there’s a course with a title we don’t like and we think this is a big problem.” Is the Redoubt really so fragile that a freshman writing seminar with a bold title merits this level of attention and criticism? Such weakness in the face of controversial ideas is a bad habit of the woke left, but the situation at W&L shows that it is present on the right, too.

One may object to the conflation of The General’s Redoubt—an alumni group specifically focused on W&L issues—with the American right. I readily admit that the match is not perfect, but in every relevant sense, the Redoubt is a conservative organization. For years, the Redoubt has fought to protect Washington and Lee’s name and institutional history, in addition to criticizing the administration at any sign of advancing a liberal ideology. What’s more, the ludicrous reaction to the course title primarily occurred within conservative media circles, evidenced by the Breitbart article and Gingrich’s tweet (there were others too).

When it comes to combating the woke left, conservatives should not make it a race to the bottom. The left will win if we try to play on their turf. Instead of caving to the forces of fragility and cancellation, conservatives should renew our commitment to America’s founding principles, especially freedom of speech. Though it may seem futile in the short term, conservatives will enjoy benefits in the long run if we resist the urge to engage in the same irrational, destructive hypocrisy that defines the modern left.